Southern Migration

Art making in the Old City

I had the opportunity to volunteer with an after school program near the school where I took a few Spanish classes. For two afternoons I worked with a group of students, trying my best to teach in Spanish (while they mocked me). It was really fun and I hope to return and work with them on a longer project in the future!

Our first lesson was an observational painting lesson, and the kids responded with so much talent and energy! There was a large garden outside of their classroom, so I asked them to paint parts of the plants they saw. I tried to encourage more looking at the plants than at their papers, and asked that they try to re-create unique, strange, beautiful or ugly lines and edges (not to simply paint what they thought a plant should look like). Amazingly, many of them understood my broken Spanish and took the challenge on. I was really impressed with the results!

Here are their paintings. I love the variety of shapes and contours, even though they were all just working with black paint and white paper. Later I let them add color to some of the pieces but I think they all looked best at this stage. A learning moment for me as far as lesson planning!

The next day we attempted an animated painting project, where everyone worked on one large painting while I photographed the process for animating (see final result below). This project was a bit of a challenge with the language barrier, but it went ok. One student told me he thought the finished painting was ugly. I said that sometimes when people try to work together the final product is ugly, and that we have to practice working together to make something beautiful. Aren't I a sage? Are you vomiting yet?

Here's the movie we made! 6 seconds for an hour and a half of work. The kid saying "chucino chucino chucino" is apparently quoting a local crackhead. So cute and innocent!

More video stills


As I've already mentioned, Casco Viejo was inexplicably inspiring for me. The building where I did my volunteer work and took Spanish classes was especially cool, with several rooms that were falling apart, paint peeling, graffiti, etc. I wanted to shoot a video but didn't have a good costume, so I bought a mask for 50 cents, a roll of wrapping paper for a dime, grabbed a bunch of newspapers and with some folding and taping, voila, a character! Here are some stills from the raw video footage I shot. We'll see where it goes once it's edited!